Re: [gentoo-user] Are those "green" drives any good?

[David Haller <gentoo@dhaller.de>]

Hello,

On Wed, 09 May 2012, Dale wrote:
>As some know, I'm planning to buy me a LARGE hard drive to put all my
>videos on, eventually.  The prices are coming down now.  I keep seeing
>these "green" drives that are made by just about every company nowadays.
> When comparing them to a non "green" drive, do they hold up as good?
>Are they as dependable as a plain drive?  I guess they are more
>efficient and I get that but do they break quicker, more often or no
>difference?

Basically: they run a 5400 min^-1, the "normal" ones at 7200 min^-1
and the green use less power. Years ago, a normal drive took 10-13W
running, up to 27W during spinup. Now it's IIRC 4-6W running and some
more during spinup (haven't seen any figures lately).

>I have noticed that they tend to spin slower and are cheaper.  That much
>I have figured out.  Other than that, I can't see any other difference.
> Data speeds seem to be about the same.

Yes.

>Please, no brand wars.  I may get a WD, Maxtor, Samsung or some other
>brand.

Hm. You've been out of the loop. Of those 3, only one remains.
Maxtor was bought by Seagate some years ago and Samsung this year,
there's now appearing the first Samsung drives from Seagate (I got one
of those, odd labeling, sold as
2000GB Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL004 (HD204UI)

So, now there's only 3.5 to 4 Manufacturers left: WD, Seagate, Hitachi
and Toshiba (and Fujitsu?) manufacturing only 2.5" laptop drives.

Other sellers like cnMemory etc. used to repackage Samsung drives
(IIRC the othere Manufatureres did not allow that), I wonder what
those will do now that Samsung is bought up by Seagate.

HTH,
-dnh

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